Dave Bakke: Former Springfield educator becomes part of Obama announcement

Wednesday

Sep 28, 2011 at 12:01 AMSep 28, 2011 at 4:20 AM

Not surprisingly, some Springfield educators made it a point Friday to watch TV coverage as President Obama announced changes in the No Child Left Behind law. But they were surprised to see a familiar face just over Obama’s right shoulder.

DAVE BAKKE

Not surprisingly, some Springfield educators made it a point Friday to watch TV coverage as President Obama announced changes in the No Child Left Behind law. But they were surprised to see a familiar face just over Obama’s right shoulder.

The guy looked a lot like Dave Estrop, who used to be deputy superintendent of the Springfield School District. In fact, that is who it was.

From Ohio, where he works, Dave imagines the reaction as Springfield watched the president’s announcement: “Who’s that standing next to the president? That looks like Dave Estrop. Naaah, what would Dave Estrop be doing standing next to the president?”

I’ll tell you what he was doing standing next to the president.

Dave grew up on a farm north of Rochester. He went to Rochester High School, then on to Western Illinois University in Macomb. His first teaching gig was in 1969 at Springfield High School. His wife, Virginia, is from Greenview.

His mother, Marjorie, lives here, as does his brother, the Rev. Mark Estrop, who is pastor at Rolling Prairie Baptist Church, a new church starting in Rochester, as well as chaplain at the MacFarland Mental Health Center.

Dave has exchanged one Springfield for another. He now is superintendent of schools in Springfield, Ohio.

He has problems with No Child Left Behind. Even though his Ohio district schools improved academically last year and the district was upgraded on the Ohio rating schedule from a C to a B, the federal government’s NCLB standards showed nine out of 10 elementary schools in the district were failures. To fix that, the feds ordered students to be transferred to the one school that did pass its standards.

Well, that wasn’t going to work, so Dave got angry. He called the ruling “bureaucratic nonsense” and refused to write a required letter to parents telling them about the outcome for local schools under NCLB. Instead, he wrote an open letter about the issue to the local paper and produced a video parodying NCLB.

This caught the attention of the White House as Obama was preparing last week’s announcement.

“Tuesday of last week, I get an email from the White House,” says Dave. “I thought, ‘This is one of my friends messing with me.’”

He contacted the Chicago regional office of the Department of Education and found out that the email was legit. So he called the White House and was officially invited, along with other educators and state officials, to attend Friday’s announcement. Not only was he invited to attend, Dave was asked if he would stand on stage with Obama during the announcement.

Not only that, he was in the front row, immediately behind the president.

Not only that, he was told that Obama was going to mention him by name during the announcement.

“Not bad for a farm boy from Rochester,” says Mark Estrop.

No matter what your politics, the president is still the president, and standing inches away from him is huge.

“The sixth-grade student (who was on the stage) and I were the shortest,” Dave says. “That’s why we were in the front.”

At the White House waiting for the announcement to begin, Dave was able to chat up Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown about NCLB and why it needed revision.

Then they were taken to the West Wing of the White House (“I got to look into the Oval Office,” Dave reports) and on to the Green Room staging area, just minutes before the president’s arrival.

“They took us out and we practiced getting out there so we didn’t trip over ourselves or do stupid things on TV,” Dave reports. “Then it happened.”

And you couldn’t miss Dave, being right there on the president’s shoulder.

White House officials did have a couple of special requests for Dave, seeing as how he was pretty much front and center.

“They said, ‘Dr. Estrop, we saw your open letter in the News Sun,’” he recalls, “and the president would like to feature that with your name in the president’s speech. Does that meet with your approval?”

Oh yes, it met with his approval.

One more thing. “When the president says your name, he will turn around and look at you. So would you mind acknowledging him?”

Yes, Dave said, he thought he could manage to do that. He got his chance when the president said his name with about two minutes to go in the speech. He did just fine.

Everybody has a story. The problem is that some of them are boring. If yours is not, contact Dave Bakke at 788-1541 or dave.bakke@sj-r.com. His column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. To read more, visit www.sj-r.com/bakke.

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